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Email Marketing: A Social Media Must?

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Social Media has become too important to be ignored by any online marketing company. Email marketing can no longer survive by itself and has to coordinate with all the powerful social media in order to make an impact. With over a billion users only on Facebook, one simply cannot ignore such a huge database, as converting even a small percentage of it means big business for any online business. Twitter, on the other hand, has over 100 million users, which again is not a small figure. Considering such mind-boggling figures and the wonders they can work in any business, any company into email marketing has to consider working in tandem with the omnipresent social media.

The primary thing an email marketer needs to keep in mind is the subscription forms found on most social media sites. These open fantastic opportunities and present the unique gateway for a successful email marketing campaign. These forms are the passports that let you give your prospective customers the chance to give you their acknowledgement and permission to send them your emails and newsletters. You can use any of the email marketing software available to create subscription forms that can be integrated with social media sites.

Another great tip is to attract the potential buyers by letting them know about the current promotions and discounts. You can publicize this information through the leading social media sites like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc. You can easily convince the customers to sign up to your campaign by offering a one time discount or promotion that sounds very attractive and absolutely irresistible. To add some spice to the campaign, you could include interesting contests and sweepstakes with a deadline that will prompt them to sign up instantly. The very same social media can be used to promote the sweepstakes and contests, the results of which can be published on the same platform.

Today, the social media network is used by all age groups and people from various social and financial backgrounds. There are several marketing companies as well, vying with each other to gain the attention of a vast untapped market. Hence, it will be prudent to devise ways and means to stand out in the crowd and be able to appeal to such a huge captive audience. The only way to do that would be to be brief, relevant, and honest with a consistency of purpose and uniqueness that will draw customers automatically. Once you have the ball rolling and have a few people sign up, you can convince them to refer their friends and family (offering the proper incentives) and have a sizeable following that will sign up by this word-of-mouth campaign. An attractive referral bonus will automatically help snowball the campaign to levels that you had never imagined possible.

However, it is important not to rest on your laurels as mere signing up of customers is just not enough. You will have to follow it up with vigorous email campaigning and using other methods like social sharing tags which helps share the email with their circles. You can monitor the progress on the social media and keep pace and ensure that the customers stay with you by continuing the campaign by adding new inputs.

Author’s Bio:
Patrick Hudson currently works at charter cable company, a site that enables everyone to learn about how to save on broadband and internet cable.